How i got Safari to have enabled WebGL again

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8 points

How i got Safari to have enabled WebGL again

I' referencing this month-old thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251543248

I had like many others a not working WebGL though new iMac and newest Safari (13 and now 14). But it worked in another user account ('admin' in my case). So i checked the com.apple.safari.plist, which is under Mojave in

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Preferences

And there i found three entries related to webgl:

<key>WebKitPreferences.webGLEnabled</key>
<false/>

<key>WebKitWebGLEnabled</key>
<false/>

<key>com.apple.Safari.ContentPageGroupIdentifier.WebKit2WebGLEnabled</key>
<false/>

I presume they come from older Safari versions, are in newer Safaris not accessible but are considered by Safari. I changed the three <false/> to <true/>, restarted and WebGL is now working!

But, maybe better, deleting the .plist file is an option? Or it's an argument for better 'clean install' a new macOS.

Editing the .plist should not be easy because of SIP, but for me it worked without problems (opened in BBedit and saved).

So i'm happy with WebGL working in Safari, but perhaps someone has an advice to make it better?

iMac 27″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Sep 18, 2020 1:17 AM

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Answer 1

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hopfentramp Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 18, 2020 2:06 PM in response to BDAqua

And you have a problem with Safari and WebGL? There maybe other reasons for this problem.

But for users like me, who had lots of Safari versions and migrated instead of new installing, there is a chance to solve the problem. My MacBook (no WebGL problem) also have no WebGL entries in com.apple.safari.plist and the file is much smaller (14 kB) as the iMac one (28 kB). So i speculate these entries are artifacts from older Safari versions, when it was possible to enable/disable WebGL (1.0) with a checkbox. Nowadays they shouldn't be present. I think i will delete the .plist to get a totally fresh new one, as soon as i know what gets lost and must be reconfigured.

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